turrets of white stone, and, in a niche over the great doorway, the carved statue of a saint clothed in long draperies. But it is the Churchyard that interests one; it is gracefully skirted to the south and screened from the rough winds by a few tall trees,-beeches, and feathery pine,-so that it is always green and warm. Here and there are little garden borders, planted with fragrant lavender and delicate lilac bushes, and encircling separate headstones, which gleam out with a desolate whiteness; for there are a few sculptured tombs, and some of them are marked with the Cross, the sign of salvation, and others tell us thankfully that whom death separates, the grave unites; but there is not one of them in that questionable taste which seeks obtrusively to violate the stern equality of death. Others, indeed by far the greater number, are laid down soft and mossy, like beds made ready for the weary to rest in; some are full-grown, and some are very short; but in and out of them all the wild red and silver daisies flower, and weeping willows grow upon their thin grey stems, and beside them, in unchanging olive-green hue, the mystic branches of the Tree of Life. Nearly in the middle is an almond tree, which foretels the spring before winter is over, it is at that time so thickly covered with its flaky white blossoms, and leafless boughs; shewing in strong relief to a dark yew tree close by. And

here, at sundown and all afternoon, the shadows fall upon the turf of palest green, so very still and clear; and the light plays in streaks, and shining spots, and wandering paths, like the beaming footprints of an angel; for the peace which abides there is perfect, and the rest is inviolate; anticipating, and as it were entering into, that spirit of joy which is given in the habitations of light and happiness, in the abodes of blessedness, where every sorrow is exiled afar.

It is well for us sometimes to dwell among the tombs; to evoke those gentle recollections which come fresh and fragrant, even from the still waters of our childhood's memory; for the best and the fairest, the true, the innocent, the kindly-affectioned, are commonly carried there first; because, in the beautiful words of the Pilgrim's Progress, "The Master was not willing they should be so far from Him any longer." Perhaps when they were alive, we slighted them, and said that they were just like other people, because it was not convenient to us to own or to imitate them, or because they did not do their work in our way; or, lazily and unthankfully, we have entered into their labours,-taken possession, as a thing of course, of the enjoyments and the friends which their memory has made sure to us. Any how, let us no longer persist in so

unloving a thing, as to forget, and to live apart from, the ennobled and the happy dead.

And if, as Christians, we mean what we say, often as we repeat those words, "I believe in the resurrection of the body;" then, over and above all that partakes of what is selfish and individual, must our Churchyards be very near and dear to us, because they are so many separate leaves in that Book of Life, to be put together and deciphered, not one missing, on the resurrection morning. In that day of trembling limbs and failing hearts, there will indeed be a dissolution of all that we now call "national and historical records," whether those that are contained in deep books, or bound up in wise laws, or embodied to the eye in those vast and ancient buildings which look as if they had been set up so solidly on purpose to meet the fires of the judgment day. But when all these shall have passed away as a scroll, fitly indeed and necessarily so; because all that is national and social will then and there be absorbed in the one great family of God, our Churchyards will not even then lose their interest, as having been, what they are now, the last earthly restingplaces of the just; whilst yet the shadow of the great white throne was falling deeper over us, and the night was nearer to its close, and the day nearer to its dawn.

CHAPTER II.

THE LITTLE CROSS-BEARER.

Whom Christ hath blessed, and called His own,

He tries them early, look and tone,

Bent brow and throbbing heart;

Tries them with pain, dread seal of love.

LYRA INNOCENTIUM.

WE are very proud of our pretty School-house. It is built of tinted stone with white mullions, and pointed gables, and a curious mosaic roof of red and purple tiles, that shine just like polished marbles in the sun. And it stands on the very edge of a beautiful Down, always covered with short, soft turf, of that dark deep green peculiar to Gloucestershire, the smooth surface dotted by many a great hawthorn, which scent the air all round with their sweet pearly blossoms, and broken here and there by curious hollows that are quite a little study for the naturalist, for in them the golden cistus, and the pink heath, and innumerable wild flowers peep out from between the grey-moss stones and the sheltering blackberry bushes, forming soft nests for the loveliest things, such as the

delicate grasshopper, the small azure-blue butterflies, and the grand peacock moth. All is so small, yet so infinitely full of life in multiplied forms, that one almost expects to see the mushroom table of the fairies set under the shadow of the elegant fern leaves, as it used to be in days of old.

But since this world was overshadowed by the tree which bare a twofold fruit, good out of evil, and evil in good, we have never been short of hard contrasts, set side by side, even in the visible creation, a sort of sacramental sign of what it must be within, till we come where there are no clouds, nor any more shadows. So, by a short cut we leave the flowery dingles, and in less than five minutes we are in the heart of our parish, in very close contact with much that is offensive, even abhorrent, to both eye, and ear, and heart. We call part of this district "the Quarry," for it is built in an enormous stone quarry long since deserted; and, as might be expected, the cottages that have grown up, almost by accident, within it, have not been constructed with much regard to cleanliness or comfort, far less to external beauty. Here, by a sharp flight of broken steps, in the furrows of which the rain leaves eddying circles of black water, we get access to a line of low hovels, their walls of dingy, smoked brick, their broken panes stuffed with old rags, suggestive